DR George asked:
That's so cool, ChasSmith. I wonder if a production is going to tour. Do you know if the script been updated in any way, or was it just the production itself that was really good?
Nope, this was a college production and yesterday was the closing performance.
No updating. Except for trims, they followed the script. According to the talkback remarks, the original concept sounded dead-on-arrival in comparison with this. The original Greek chorus ensemble was in static speaking and singing groups, some of them in choir robes. Here, the leads (except for Joe) were always part of the ensemble, still in costume, when not doing their own scene. It was never a distraction to see, for example, dead Grandma integrated into other scenes. The entire blocking choreography was complex and, for me, mind blowing, since I don't have a creative bone in my body when it comes to that kind of thing.
The director added one idea: a framing device, starting the show in the last scene where Joe has his epiphany. At that point the music started and the entire show unfolded, backwards, at high speed, to the playing of the overture, so that at the end of the overture, everyone had "reverted" to their position in the first scene. I think my jaw was on the floor that whole time. The complexity of it, even of the "forward" blocking itself, can't even be described by the likes of me.
